“THE KEY TO MY GRANDFATHER’S HOUSE,” written and photographed by David Imbrogno and video produced by Douglas Imbrogno is a powerful, moving photo-poem-essay on the immigrant tale of one Italian family. But it could be the kindred tale of millions of families across innumerable cultures through time.

This particular story began on a steep Calabrian hillside in the early 20th century in the southern Italian Province of Cosenza., moving through Ellis Island to the small town of Lorain, Ohio. It circles back upon themes of family, loss and heritage through text, photographs and sound effects.

IT IS A BIG ASK IN THIS SHORT-ATTENTION-SPAN ERA— 16 minutes of your undivided attention for this brotherly collaboration which reaches across two continents and two centuries. But after it is through, we feel you will come to understand the rewards of settling into a quiet space with your computer or phone and experiencing this journey with undivided attention. Your feedback is welcome and any other reactions it stirs in you from your own immigrant roots. In one way or another, we are all descendants of immigrants from somewhere and someplace. As my elder brother David puts it:

“The Key To My Grandfather’s House” story is not mine, not brother Doug’s, it is our family’s story … Normally I would say that I wrote it. Actually I feel as if I “channelled” it from our ancestors. I am usually a visual communicator but here the words came to the forefront and my photographs reverted to snapshots… Our Aunts Teresa and Loretta who accompanied us might have been the mediums through which our ancestors channelled the story.”

David adds: “Please, find a quiet place to enjoy the sixteen minute show. Turn on the sound and watch it full screen.”

A rose bush flanked in the back by an olive grove at the top of the Calabrian hillside where our father was born. | Photograph by DAVID IMBROGNO

THIS IS AN EXCERPT OF A MUCH LARGER written photo-essay (a prose-poem, really) by David. If interested in reading and viewing the longer piece, visit CowGarage.com or EvidenceofmylLife.com. This video can be viewed as a separate stand-alone work of art, but it is also a companion piece to a spoken word live performance.

FOR MORE ON THE VIDEO, to read the longer photo-essay or to schedule a live performance of “The Key,” subscribe to the websites above and to this website, TheWebTheater.com by clicking on the “subscribe” option in the right-hand top of the home page. You can reach either of us through those sites. Grazie mille!

THIS VIDEO IS A CO-PRODUCTION by David and Douglas Imbrogno. | Current version as of AUG 11, 2018

But then I figured I could do a little more. I got out my tools from my career communications kit: songcraft and videosmithing. Here’s the result, a music video by the newly made-up band The Front Porch Lights (actually, me and my guitar, multitracked and tweaked a score of times). Perdóname, you native or accomplished Spanish speakers, if my Google Translate-powered Spanish verse is not quite as felicitous as it might be.

I would like to believe “the So-Called President” (to quote my spouse in her more gracious moments) has seen the light with his newly announced Executive Order ending the family separation practice. But Malcolm Gladwell needs to add a new chapter to his masterpiece, because it sure seems like we have passed innumerable tipping points — and nothing has tipped yet in Trumpistan. He’s an outlier of outrage.

“Motherless Child” (or “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”) is a public domain traditional Negro spiritual, to borrow from the song’s Wikipedia page. So, it fits perfectly in this moment in American history. As the page goes on to note: “The song is clearly an expression of pain and despair as it conveys the hopelessness of a child who has been torn from her or his parents.” But it also has a tinge of hope to it, the author of the entry notes, as it is just “sometimes” I feel like a motherless child, implying the hope of reuniting mother and child (and father and child) remains the promise buried in the lament.

HERE ARE MY REWORKED LYRICS(Feel free to cover the song, as noted below):
NOTE: The music video version is played with a capo at the first fret

“Motherless Child 2018,” adapted by Douglas Imbrogno:

Em Am Em
Sometimes I feel like a motherless childAm Em
Sometimes I feel like a motherless childEm Am Em
Sometimes I feel like a motherless childC B7
taken from her handsC B7
I do not understand!C B7 Em B7
Why did you just yank me from her hands?

Sometimes I feel like a fatherless child…
Sometimes I feel like a fatherless child…
Sometimes I feel like a fatherless child…
Sleeping on a mat,
Wondering where’s he’s at.
Curled up all alone upon this mat.

Sometimes I feel like we’re already gone.
Sometimes I feel like we’re already gone.
Sometimes I feel like we’re already gone.
I know that can’t be right… Turn on your front porch light…

Sometimes I feel like a country-less child.
Sometimes I feel like a country-less child.
Sometimes I feel like a country-less child.
A-wandering in the night.
I can see your front porch light!
Will you leave me lonely in the night?

Em Am Em
Sometimes I feel like a motherless childEm Am Em
Sometimes I feel like a motherless childEm Am Em Em
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.

PSS: For DIY music video geeks, a note. I have long since lost patience with complex new programs. This song and video were cobbled together with spit and baling wire, using a Yeti Blue microphone (I adore the midnight blue one I just bought at Best Buy), Garageband and Final Cut Pro. And coffee.

VIDEO: Interviewing the InterviewerNOTES: Sandy Wells is a beloved, legendary reporter and profiler at the Charleston Gazette-Mail in Charleston, W.Va. In her ‘Innerviews’ column, the 76-year-old writer has been profiling people of all walks of life weekly since 1988. Head out on assignment with her in this video as she interviews a 102-year-old woman, who may be hard of hearing but is anything but clueless. This is a companion video to go with a story I wrote about Wells’ career in the April 14, 2018 Gazette-Mail, for a column which she once summed up this way:“I’ve learned how extraordinary ordinary people can be. I’ve learned how ordinary extraordinary people can be.”RELATED:Read up on Sandy’s long career.

VIDEO: Crowdsourcing the 2018 WV Teacher Strike : PART 2NOTES: I will admit: I love the dumb bunnies set-up in this video. Of the hundreds of videos I have created, this is one of my personal favorites (including timing the piece to Lucas the Flow’s killer soundtrack “Angelic”). This crowdsourcing technique is a fascinating way to tell a complex story, although when you get nearly 500 submissions it is a LOT of work sifting through them. The newspaper would never have been able to show-and-tell all that’s covered in these crowdsourced videos with just staff content. It was like having eyes and ears everywhere. Plus, a whole lot of the reader-submitted content was shot with smart phones held vertically, as opposed to the usual horizontal aspect ratio of most feature videos. But here’s the cool thing: strip three vertical smartphone photos (or videos) together and you cover the horizontal screen. Layer and fade and you can get some pretty interesting effects — dumb bunnies included. Take a look.RELATED:
— Crowdsourcing the 2018 WV Teacher Strike : PART 1— Day 8 of the 2018 WV Teacher Strike: Bands, banjos and honks
— The Charleston Gazette-Mail’s 2018 Teacher Strike Roundup Page

VIDEO: Crowdsourcing the 2018 W.Va. Teacher Strike : PART 1NOTES: I shot a video of the massive 2018 W.Va. Teacher’s Strike on its eighth day in late March 2018. I awoke the ninth day feeling out of sorts and didn’t get to work until noon. That, of course, was the day the strike was settled to much jubilation and national coverage. Drat! Blaspheme! Curses! But….. wait! There were thousands of cameras there, if mine was not. Why not ask readers for their (literal) view of the strike? Facebook and newspaper solicitations resulted in a torrent of submissions: almost 500 photographs and videos. I lined up a green-screen studio shoot , courtesy of the EDC co-working site in Charleston, interviewed a key reporter covering the strike and wove in reader submissions and staff photography and video. Here’s the result.NUMBERS: This video got more than 22,000 views on Facebook and was shared widely nationally, especially as teacher strikes took hold in other states such as Oklahoma and Kentucky.RELATED:
—A Crowdsourced look at the 2018 WV Teacher Strike: Part 2
— Day 8 of the 2018 WV Teacher Strike: Bands, banjos and honks
— The Charleston Gazette-Mail’s 2018 Teacher Strike Roundup Page

VIDEO: Time To DeliverNOTES: I often try to tell somewhat complex stories in the confines of the short time period/window of engagement that people give to social media videos. Sometimes, it’s nice just to try to do one thing. For aspiring video producers, that might make a nice Guiding Principle for Short Videos: Tell One Thing (TOT). So, this video exemplifies the TOT manifesto. My colleague, Bill Lynch, has a series called ‘One Month at a Time’ in which he spends a month learning some new skill. For February 2018, he learned how flower shops operate. After designing some floral displays, the final step in his 30-day apprenticeship was to deliver. And so he does, but not without a few wrong turns. Tell One Thing: Bill trying to deliver flowers in a Charleston skyscraper.

VIDEO: Surprising Miss FrancisNOTES: Sometimes, the most mundane stories are the ones that resonate with a public hungry for a little—just a little!—respite from the drumbeat of awful, disheartening news in the world that day. So, it was that we got word a local elementary school in Belle, W.Va., was going to spring a surprise on a beloved custodian named Frances Buzzard, a k a ‘Miss Francis.’ The odd thing was, Miss Francis had never in her life had a birthday party. Could this be? And what would her reaction be to her first surprise party and a big one at that? To quote the credit card commercial: Priceless.NUMBERS: You’ll notice I do not list social media view counts for most videos on TheWebTheater, except for when they are unusual. This is because sometimes a video may have only a couple hundred views, but that’s just fine as the business or persons or organization that needed to see the video saw it. But the ‘Miss Francis’ video went modestly viral on Facebook, wracking up more than 91,500 at last count, with about 1,000 shares and more than 200 comments, with an additional 89,000-plus views on YouTube (which is unusual since the Gazette-Mail’s channel is hardly promoted and we are happy to get 200 views for a video there). More significant still— last I looked, not a single comment was negative or snarky from among those 200 comments. Now, that’s news.RELATED:Here is the companion Charleston Gazette-Mail story to the above video.

VIDEO: The Curious Case of the Nicholas County, W.Va., Mystery PaintingsNOTES: I was going to phone this story in—literally. It was a freezing December day and I was just going to do a phone interview to check up on a Facebook tip on some supposedly intriguing paintings in a 19th century farmhouse in the West Virginia outback. Am dearly glad I went out on this one, as encountering these amazing works made the story. Plus, the iPhone video I shot to go with the story went modestly viral on the newspaper’s Facebook page, with nearly 45,000 views as of January 2017, more than 500 shares and hundreds of comments. A fascinating backstory that resonated with readers and viewers. Did a Dalton Gang brother on the run paint these remarkable works and then flee? And if not, who did? And who will preserve them now?SOUNDTRACK: “I Can Feel It Coming” by Kevin MacLeodRELATED STORY:Read it here.PS:Here’s a family video shot years ago about the mysterious paintings, uploaded because interest in this story was so intense.PSS: The cinema verite handshake of the iPhone B-roll is not the greatest. Time for one of these!

VIDEO: A start-to-finish look at a chocolate-covered cherry cottage industry.NOTES: In a tiny quilt shop in Barboursville, W.Va., a woman has perfected the chocolate covered cherry. No, you can’t have the recipe, even for $100,000. Co-produced by Maria Young and Douglas ImbrognoSOUNDTRACK: “Brightly Fancy” by Kevin MacleodLENGTH: 2 min 23 sec

VIDEO: Crowdsourcing Appalachian imageryNOTES: ‘Looking at Appalachia’ is a crowd-sourced project that aims to depict life in the 420-county Appalachian region through user-submitted photographs, in an attempt to counter the “visual narrative” imposed on the region by the War on Poverty and other sources.LENGTH: 2 min 30 secSOUNDTRACK: “Against All Odds (ft. Zack Markham)” by Lucas the Flow

VIDEO: The Great Gitmo Cat RescueNOTES: When the Meades decided to retire from life as government contractors at the Guantanamo Naval Air Base — better known as ‘Gitmo’ — they had a problem. Well, 25 problems. What to do with their cats? A curious airlift ensued.RELATED:Read the Gazette-Mal story that went with this video. The story won 2nd place in Feature Writing in the 2017 West Virginia Press Association awards.SOUNDTRACK: “Expressive PHNK VP” by Lucas the FlowLENGTH: 2 min 58 sec

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This is a portfolio of multimedia work by Douglas Imbrogno and selected collaborators from short-form videos to mini-documentaries and much more. Look around. If you'd like to talk about multimedia work, please visit the Contact page.